Water pet doesn't backstab til lvl 54 lol but yeah, Fire solo, fire if duo or grouped with pet tanking, water if grouped with a tank, air if grouped and fighting casters, earth if you want to try and do CC for a group, but never solo. If you're fighting stuff you need root for you are doing it wrong imo

FWIW, fire pet trades damage shield for bash/kick but otherwise does same dps as water, so no less efficient for group honestly, and you can offtank adds with him if not being crowd controlled for way more dps yet again.

They drop in CT as well as Najena. Najena is easier and makes more sense. CT is glitch as hell on p99 and deadly

When you head to OOT for your pet spells, you could probably ask in zone if anyone has the toes you need for your focus items. There is a named Cyclops there that drops all the types of toes you need and there are usually people willing to kill it for you. That is what I did and was able to get the toes I needed for at least the water and fire pets. Look up on the wiki which ones you need and ask around in OOT. Actually I could just post here for you:

Fire Pet - Fire Giant Toes
Water Pet - Ice Giant Toes
Air Pet - Cyclops Toes
Earth Pet - Hill Giant Toes

you can also get someone to kill oracle for robe of the oracle if he's up.

bring enough to buy extra copies of spells because lvl 24 pet IS research only made with lvl 20 pet spells, only earth pet can be bought at 24.

All the pets have their uses. Fire tends to be best for solo with its high self DS but remember all of a mages flexibility is in their pets. We don't have any CC/stuns/etc of any kind on our own. There are times you will want to use other pets.
Perfect example is if you're soloing casters that you want to burn down fast. Use air for stun or more likely earth for high hp + root. In this case the fire pets DS isn't very useful and his lower hp will drop fast. (focused fire pet has hp of unfocused air pet. Earth still has significantly higher hp)
Another example is splitting 2 tough mobs. The fire pet will die too fast usually with his low hp. Earth pet allows you to root, pull back and fight 1 at a time (although for short times but still saves a lot of damage if you position well)
So if you want to just level easy mode on the bard diet, sure only buy your fire pets and make yourself another CotH bot but if you really want to play a mage use all your tools.

casters still melee a ton and fire pet still does more dmg... the damage shield hits as hard as the pet does.... every single attack that hits it.. so it literally kills twice as fast as other pets for the most part... and on casters you can burn them, they have lower hp.

Higher hp means nothing almost as you'll have to a)chain summon or b)heal pet and either way an earth pet takes SO much longer to kill that you are less efficient from mana consumption standpoint, and also less efficient from time to kill standpoint, drastically reducing overall speed at which you are capable of leveling.


By all means, you can use any pet and succeed but a fire pet is the superior pet in 90%+ situations as you level solo, duo, and even often grouped unless you have good CC and never need offtanking.

Fire pet is also your single best mana/dmg spell to cast honestly anyways so I'd rather summon 4 fire pets than 2 earth pets and nuke if it honestly came down to that.

Best bet for mage is get fire focus asap and find a caster to duo with (enchanter, mage, necro all perfect duos with other pets) so you don't lose xp form pet doing most of dmg. insanely powerful combos and you are your own holy trinity played right... tank, healer, and dps. Plenty of ways to skin a cat, I just think that one gets you the best hide so to speak.

Every one keeps making the point that Fire is best because of DS. Don't forget, Mages get castable FIRE DS and can add that to any pet or player they choose making all pets viable solo.

Bodybagger is right about the Water pet not backstabbing till level 54. I am so used to my high level Mage forgot. :(

So I would still say Fire pet solo, Air pet groups. But if you have a bad puller and a lot of adds I would say use the Fire pet to take on a single to kill. It really depends on how the group is or what mobs you are going against solo. And it is really VERY hard to get all 4 pets at the same level with the damn research thing that you are trading off a lower level pet at times to summon. Mage is at times easy and hard as hell at the same time.

And now with the latest patches I have found Pet agro to be pretty good. So Earth pet sort of works a little better now than say 6 months ago. So more options lol. :eek: But I would only use it in really ugly situations and that is probably not something you want to get into on a Mage anyways. :p

Lvl 20 is 9dmg you cast and spend mana om repeated vs 24+ focus fire pet has already... Its like powerleveling yourself. Its obscene.

True but either way any can have DS if you like.. Been to long but I remember my DS being 24 at 55. I can't remember when I got that one.